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Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Today is Wanderlust Wednesday, where I talk about awesome places I’ve had the pleasure to visit and explore, as well as share some photos of my experience. This time, I’m dedicating this post to my latest weekend trip to Montalegre in the very north of Portugal. I had already been there once, on an academic field trip in April 2011 and promised myself I'd go back one day (that's what I did!). I wrote two other Wanderlust Wednesday posts on that trip, you can see them here and here.

This weekend away was initially D.’s idea as, a couple of weeks ago, news sources were reporting lots of snow in the inland villages and mountains. As people who have always lived near the coast, he has never seen snow in his life and it’s been roughly over 20 years since I experienced it myself. He quickly suggested a weekend away in one of those places and I mentioned Montalegre. He ended up booking the soonest possible weekend in a local hotel.

We arrived the town of Montalegre around lunch time on Saturday. The bad news? There was absolutely no snow to be seen and D. was, obviously, a very sad panda. Even though I felt a little bad for him since I was the one who chose our destination, we did our best to enjoy our trip to its fullest even so. Apparently all snow in the country had already melted away, anyway. In terms of weather, Saturday was a lovely day with clear skies, even though temperatures were pretty low especially in the evening. We spent the afternoon wandering the village and paying a visit to a local museum, as well as the castle for obligatory pictures. The village itself is wonderful, located on top and the slope of a hill, surrounded by mountains of green pasture fields and forests of native trees. That was basically our view from the hotel room’s window. I can’t even imagine how wonderful it must be to wake up in a cold winter’s morning and find those mountains, fields and forests completely covered in white, like the news had shown just a few days before.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Hey there, everybody. It’s been a long while since I last wrote in Terra + Luna and I honestly feel pretty sad I’ve neglected this little blog and my jewelry making activities for such a long time. Even my Instagram account went completely silent all of a sudden. The truth is, there have been (and still are) tenfolds of things and projects on my mind and too little time for most of them. In one of my last posts, back in May, I wrote about a great shift in my life which has indeed brought me into a completely different reality than the one I was living in beforehand. My life changed. An year ago, I was working for free and really struggling in my day-to-day life, both financially and emotionally. This weekend, I was able to afford a weekend trip together with my boyfriend to one of the most magickal places I’ve ever been at in my short life. It’s crazy (and amazing) how things can change in the blink of an eye. It might not look like it day by day, but when we suddenly look back, everything’s different.

Of course, a few other things have happened in these past 8 months. Namely:

▲ I signed a 9-month contract for a paid internship (ending next March 1st);
▲ I got more involved in the gaming community by creating a Twitter account and blog on World of Warcraft content. Also hosted a WoW screenshot contest for Halloween/Samhain;
▲ I attended the second edition of Comic Con Portugal, where I saw John Noble and a few other personalities in person;
▲ I stopped working out for a few months because of my bad knee and quickly felt the effects on my body. I am now, slowly, pushing myself back up with a new workout plan;
▲ I developed my Photoshop skills a little bit and also got back to practicing drawing on a more or less regular basis;
▲ I started a Woodland themed Tumblr blog;
▲ between other minor things.

And for the next few months? As I said, a have a lot of things on my mind and I’m still struggling to find balance between adulting and personal projects. I guess I have always been some sort of overachiever as I tend to overwhelm myself with attractive ideas which warm my heart. So I’ll be doing my best to focus on one thing at a time from now on instead of trying to get all the things done simultaneously (aka monotasking). So yes, balance. I believe that is my main 2016 keyword.